GB Assignee & Inventor Trends

A synthetic biology perspective

Resident country details

This section of the report provides resident country figures for each EPO publication based on the assignee or inventor country. The data has been standardised to ensure that a specific country is only counted once when either using INPADOC patent family or single EPO publication counts. The patent assignee can be an organisation(s) and/or individual(s) that have an ownership interest in the legal rights a patent offers. For figures related to assignee or inventor, the data was merged and duplicates were removed to ensure specific country codes are only counted once.

Bespoke data analysis was carried out to synthesise the data and standardise the format for correct counting procedures. The analysis of assignee or inventor country together provides a crosscheck of scenarios where headquarters may be offshore (assignee country) but the inventor country reflects R&D carried out in a specific resident country. The standardisation of counting procedures enables a fair and transferable methodology across the different resident countries identified. Data is based on the EPO SynBio applications identified during this study, focusing on A1 & A2 kind codes. Supplementary evidence was submitted to the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee which can also be reviewed here.

Assignee & inventor country analysis

The assignees or inventors of patent families are assigned a country code. This is typically determined by the country of the assignee address or inventor details of the person(s) or organisation(s) involved. The UK assignee or inventor country designation represents a UK resident assignee or inventor. The overall totals of the top 20 assignee, inventor and assignee or inventor countries are disclosed in figure 16.1. The totals indicate the number of patent families with at least one specific country resident. The assignee or inventor country figures were produced to supplement the restricted analysis of just looking at assignee country or inventor country in isolation.

Figure 16.1 reveals the UK is ranked 5th based on the counts of UK families where there is at least one UK assignee, inventor and assignee or inventor. The United States is a leading country in Synthetic Biology. The difference between France in 4th place and the United kingdom in 5th is only 261 families, when examining the assignee or inventor countries.

The publication trends of the top 20 synthetic biology assignee countries were investigated in figure 16.2, based on published EP applications during 2004-2023. For each applicant country, the EPO SynBio applications are counted by their specific publication date. The analysis by earliest publication date across patent families was deemed insufficient.

In figure 16.2, the UK has a rapidly increasing publication trend since 2015. In recent years the UK has overtaken France. In 2023 the United kingdom had 413 published EP applications whilst France had 322 published applications. The UK is currently second in Europe behind Germany. In 2023, the UK is ranked 6th overall (based on publication figures) behind Korea (446), Japan (498), Germany (566), China (609) and the United States (3926).

International comparison - relative specialisation index

To investigate which countries may be specialising in patenting related to synthetic biology, a relative specialisation index (RSI) was calculated. Using the EPO synthetic biology dataset we map patent families to specific applicant countries. This enables the patenting activity of synthetic biology within specific countries to be contrasted with the IP5 applicant country patent family totals of each country.

The index indicates whether a country is involved with more patents within synthetic biology than would be expected, given the overall levels of patenting in the country. Enabling countries to be contrasted with each other to indicate if one is more specialised than the other in terms of patenting within the synthetic biology field.

Positive RSI scores suggest a degree of specialism, the higher values indicate a higher degree of specialism. A negative value suggests low specialism, with more negative values indicating lower degrees of specialism. The scores are normalised so that they are bounded between -1 to 1. The specialisation calculation can overemphasise effects for countries with fewer filings as there may be more pronounced deviations from the average distributions. This appears to have influenced the high ranking of smaller countries such as Denmark and Spain. For these countries with a lower output of patents, they can have higher scores as the synthetic biology output only has to be slightly higher than the lower average for the country, when compared with a large country such as the United States. The SynBio relative specialisation index is shown in figure 16.3.

In figure 16.3, the UK has a positive RSI value of 0.23 (2004-23) & 0.21 (2014-23), which is higher than the RSI values seen for other European countries with similar demographics such as Germany (RSI of -0.25) and France (-0.03). The 5th place ranking is also impressive given the UK had the 14th largest applicant country portfolio and a diverse array of patenting activity in several fields. The statistical evidence suggests the UK is one of the most specialised countries in terms of patenting within the synthetic biology field and may further develop its position in the ranking going forward.

Denmark, Spain, Belgium and Australia have high RSI scores which have been influenced by their smaller overall portfolio. For the smaller countries it is effectively easier for the synthetic biology output to be slightly higher than the average for the country and deviations from the average distributions for each country to be more distinct, leading to higher scores. They may also benefit from the presence of large organisations, etc. with high patenting activities within synthetic/engineering biology having a more pronounced impact when compared with other larger countries e.g. Novo Nordisk in Denmark.

Published applications per capita

To further assess the innovative performance of the assignee or inventor countries identified, the number of published patent applications with kind code A1 or A2 can be related to the size of the country’s population. figure 16.4 shows the resident country ranking based on the ratio of number of published European applications during 2023 per million inhabitants, capped to the top 20.

The data analysis in figure 16.4 is based on the resident country covering either a resident assignee or inventor, such that a country is only counted once per published application. The population figures were sourced from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. The United Kingdom is ranked 12th, with a noticeably lower ratio than the United States and to a lesser extent Germany which have been identified as key territories.

Sector analysis

The top 3 types of assignee sectors were investigated for the UK and as a comparison country, the United States. Data was retrieved from PATSTAT (the EPO’s patent statistical analysis database) for the United States. The sectors were manually assigned for the UK by processing the data exported from Questel Orbit. It was found that data coverage was not adequate to extend the analysis beyond the US when relying on PATSTAT data. For example some assignees had missing data or were ‘UNKNOWN’. The following data analysis represents a subset or sample from which approximate conclusions can be drawn as a guide. The analysis applies to assignee country only, inventors aren’t classified by sector. figure 16.5 shows the breakdown by sector of assignees based in the US & UK.

In figure 16.5, focusing on the United States, approx. 67% of the published applications analysed had at least one company assignee and approx. 27% had at least one university assignee. The United Kingdom compares closely with approx. 71% and 24% respectively. With complete data the figures for the US may be even higher. The assignees involved in the company and university sectors were analysed to investigate publication trends and assess if there are growing publication trends and levels of innovation using patent counts as a proxy. The publication trends for the US & UK are shown in figures 16.6 & 16.7.

In figures 16.6 & 16.7, there is evidence of increasing publication trends for both UK & US company and university assignees (based on the available data). For both countries the university and company trendlines are peaking in 2023. Whilst the US is vastly larger in SynBio patent portfolio size than the UK, there are similarities in the breakdowns of university involvement and both exhibit positive growing trendlines. The compound annual growth rates during 2014-2023 for UK universities is 7.6% and 12.2% for companies. The compound annual growth rates during 2014-2023 for US universities was 11.2% and for companies 6.7%. The rates are similar but the US portfolio is much larger than the UK.

UK SynBio compared with other UK areas

Figure 16.8 shows the patent publications made by UK applicants across all technology areas; biotechnology; and specifically engineering biology. The specialist fields of Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology appear to be growing at a faster rate than the UK generally.

Figure 16.8 indicates the synthetic biology field is growing at a faster rate in the UK than biotechnology and the UK overall (no subject matter limit). For example, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of SynBio assignees was 10.2%, compared with biotechnology 8.5% CAGR and the UK generally at 3.7% CAGR, based on SynBio publications during 2014-23. Synthetic biology is not just something that the UK is strong in relative to other countries, but engineering biology looks to be a key growth area within the UK.

UK regional analysis

The identified UK dataset for SynBio EP published applications (A1/A2 kind codes) with a UK resident assignee was mapped to UK postcodes using GeoJSON data obtained from the Office of National Statistics. Inventor address data was not used. This enables UK postcodes to be mapped to ITL3 regions (a replacement to the Eurostat system) as shown in figure 16.9. The data below excludes the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey and overseas territories beyond direct UK borders. The analysis is only possible with assignee address data.

The UK map in figure 16.9 indicates hotspots in Oxfordshire & Cambridgeshire CC with an expectedly strong presence in the London area given the number of headquarters, etc. There is a somewhat low key distribution across the country. The totals are derived from counting the ITL3 region of each UK resident application of every EP A1/A2 publication identified. If a patent publication had more than one assignee based in specific areas, the publication could be counted multiple times to reflect this.

In total 57.6% of the UK-based applicants of the European patent applications filed in engineering biology have been filed from within the golden triangle. This clearly highlights the region as a global hub for engineering biology, but also emphasises both the disparity between the golden triangle and the rest of the UK and the potential opportunities for the growth elsewhere in the UK. There are small regional hubs for engineering biology around the UK, typically located around the UK Synthetic Biology centres, in places such as Nottingham and Edinburgh, with perhaps the industrial focus of the Manchester “SYNBIOCHEM” centre helping secure Manchester as the area with the highest number of engineering biology patent filings outside of the golden triangle.